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Shelf-Confidence Book Photo Challenge

March 1 2021 – Avoid

Photo by Emily Bogle/NPR

The novel Lucky Boy focuses on two women and two very different pictures of immigration. In one story, 18-year-old Soli enters the U.S. from Mexico without papers. In the other, an Indian-American woman named Kavya is struggling to have a baby with her husband, who works in Silicon Valley. Their stories converge around a baby, the "lucky boy" of the book's title.

Author Shanthi Sekaran has a lot in common with Kavya: Both are Indian-American and both live in Berkeley, Calif. But Sekaran tells NPR's Ari Shapiro that her upbringing made her curious about a different kind of immigration story.

Find their conversation here.

Genre: Fluff Word Count: 197 Song Suggestion :Yêu Lai Tù Dãu 

      Days passed and she slowly took steps away from him. Steps so small, so slow, he didn’t notice until she had disappeared completely. Or maybe he was so absorbed in himself, he didn’t notice until the space next to him was empty. Now, the days became slower. They couldn’t talk without ending the conversation with bitter feelings. The butterflies faded away. The sweet gestures seemed to have become mandatory and the comfort of having each other dulled.

     He missed the late night conversations. He missed the soft caresses. He missed all the little things that made up “me and you”. Was it his shallowness that drove her away? Or did he not give enough? He asked himself everyday for a reason for her absence, but found it useless as the end result was always the same. Maybe if we went our separate ways, we would see if it was really love or just a moment of passion. 

Paul Goldberg’s debut novel builds a dazzling, tragicomic road trip tale around the facts of Soviet history -- starting at 2:37AM on Feb. 24, 1953, when a veteran Jewish theater actor escapes the Black Maria that’s been sent to take him to prison, and gathers a band of misfits for an attempt to assassinate Stalin.  Check out Jane Ciabattari’s review here.

Summer 

Ever struggled to get Australian humour? You’re not alone. When Mythical Books asked for a ‘please explain’, here’s what I said.

When people from around the world think of Australia, they typically think of magnificent beaches, warm weather, broad accents, venomous spiders and snakes, the Great Barrier Reef, the Sydney Opera House and, if they’re up to speed with current international politics, an embarrassing Prime Minister at the helm of a depressingly right wing government.

 Australia has all of these things, it’s true. But none of them captures the unique cultural essence that, in my view, is Australia’s greatest charm. To understand Australia’s real character, you have to understand the distinctive use of language and humour – and that was what I tried to showcase in Striking Out.

 Australians are the masters of understatement. A disastrous night out – a relationship break-up, followed by a trip to the emergency ward with food poisoning, and a long walk home in the pouring rain, for instance – might be later discussed like this:

‘How was your night out, mate?’

‘Oh. It was a bit ordinary.’ A raise of the eyebrows and a knowing nod would convey the rest.

And the thing is, Australians would get the subtext and laugh. Australians use humour and understatement to deal with misery.

Australians also employ irony as part of their distinctive interactional style:

You can assume in this example that the person asking the question already knows how the story ended and is just trying to open the door to a conversation about it.

‘How was your night out, mate?’

Your average Australian might reply. ‘Couldn’t have been better.’

Which means, of course, that it couldn’t have been worse.

Again, everyone would laugh and then – once the laughter had cleared the air and relieved the awkwardness around the issue – a more meaningful conversation would follow.

If you’ve ever been to Australia, you’ll know that Australians swear quite a lot. In all but the most conservative Australian circles, that’s not considered particularly offensive. It’s a way of introducing colour and drama to a conversation. Sexual humour is very much the same. Australians like to stretch social boundaries. On the surface, this might appear vulgar, but it actually has pro-social dimensions. It’s a way of reducing the tension around things that people don’t feel they can say.

Here’s an example of what I mean, taken from my novel, Striking Out. My heroine, Shazza, gets a phone call from a new friend, Jillian. The “elephant in the room” between them is that Jillian’s partner, Des, has been making a play for Shazza.  (By the way, Shazza’s name itself is representative of Australian humour. Sharon gets stuck with ‘Shazza’, whether she likes it or not. The country is full of ‘Barry’s’ who’ve spent their lives being called Bazza. Warren becomes Wazza. Australian nicknames are often ridiculous and they’re used to discourage people from taking themselves too seriously.) Here’s how Shazza deals with the Des issue in my story, letting Jillian know that she’s no threat. Jillian, by the way, has been having a very public affair with a guitarist.

 “I was woken by an incessant ringing soon after nine the next morning, having only fallen asleep some time after four. I felt tired and flat and murderously grumpy.

‘What?’ I shouted into the phone.

I heard a girly giggle. ‘Who’s in a bad mood, then?’ Jillian said. ‘Desperate for a shag, are we?’

I groaned. ‘That’s your bag, Jillian. All I want is a good night’s sleep.’

‘That’s where the shag comes in,’ she said. ‘It’s relaxing.’

‘That depends on who you shag. And since I know you’ve had a baby with Des, that’s really too much information. You’re making me feel sick.’

She giggled. ‘I could tell you some very interesting things about sex with Des.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ I sat up in bed and propped my pillows behind me. ‘Not on an empty stomach.’”

Shazza has used humour to convey her lack of interest in Des. And they’ve both used sexual humour to overcome the social awkwardness inherent in their situation.

Upside to reading with a Kindle - you can literally store hundreds of books on it, the battery lasts for over a month, and it weighs about as much as half a book.